5 Reasons to Use Whatever You Want to Build a Website

Aspiring web site owners of the world, please allow me to release you from your fears!

When you start looking at your options for building your first web site, you'll soon find yourself inundated with ads from Weebly, WordPress, Wix, Drupal, Squarespace, Joomla, and dozens of other unfamiliar software and company names that all insist that they offer the best solution for everyone. The truth is that all of these systems have their advantages, and there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to building a web site. In the infographic below, I've broken them down into the products and services most often mentioned by my potential clients. For purposes of this comparison, I'll define the two sets of options this way:

SAAS: stands for Software As A Service. Technically, lots of different kinds of software fit this definition -- even the software that sits on the servers at those companies that allow you to make your own photo books from photos you upload is SAAS. It just means that the software that runs and the server it runs on are inseparable. In this infographic, I'm referring to SAAS solutions for building web sites, where you pay for hosting that comes with a built-in CMS. That CMS is owned, developed, and locked down by the web host.

So, without further ado, a side-by-side comparison of the benefits of both options: